Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 10:49:53 CST
From: Dennis Baron
Subject: New Words
Now here's my contribution--, to appear in the Chicago Tribune probably
this week.
--
The Best Words of 1993
Dennis Baron
With the coming of each new year we are subjected to a
barrage of retrospective glimpses of the year gone by, on
the offchance that rehashing the top political scandals, the
worst movies, the most sociopathic celebrities, and of
course the most celebrated murderers, will somehow help us fit
our own humdrum lives into the overall scheme of things for
one more year.
In case you haven't had enough of the ten grossest box
office successes of 1993, or its ten rainiest days, or its
ten worst-performing mutual funds, here is my annual list of
the best words of last year. After all the end-of-year
summing up, and the football, which goes on and on, if we
are still in a mood to take stock of the past, one good way
to discover what a year meant is to look at the meanings of
its words.
One new word for 1993 was actually a revival, or
perhaps remake would be the better term. The "ATF": it's
not the machine where you get ready cash, it's
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a division of
the Treasury Department that had been forgotten since 1971,
when David Janssen portrayed "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury" on
television. (An earlier series based on the still-busting,
tax-collecting exploits of the T-persons, "Treasury Men in
Action," ran from 1950 to 1955.) Anyway, the ATF made news
when it bumped up against the Branch Davidians, a sect whose
name is as lucid as its beliefs.
Another word back in the spotlight after two decades of
low ratings is "warlord," a term first used in 1856 to
translate the German word for Emperor. It was later applied
to regional Chinese rulers, and then to Indonesian factions
and squabbles among Palestinian leaders. Now it refers to
politics in Somalia. It has always been a negative term.
When warlords become really successful we call them
presidential hopefuls. And we send them foreign aid.
Which brings us to another word, popular in any year,
"democracy." In 1993 democracy got a new twist in Russia,
where it came to mean the freedom to elect leaders who
advocate the end of democratic rule. But then, Russia has
been doing this for years.
Here at home, there's a group intent on ending language
democracy: these intellectual survivalists, holed out in an
isolated university in northern Michigan, oppose gun control
while they lobby for word control. They would ban from the
language such overused but no longer profitable words as
"paradigm" and "dysfunctional." Or at least impose a
five-day waiting period before you can actually say paradigm
in a sentence.
It wasn't terrorists last year but our own
democratically-elected Congress that pronounced dead the
unpronounceable "Superconducting Supercollider." Americans,
who spend billions annually on New Age books, music, tofu
and crystals in order to understand the mysteries of the
universe, made it clear they didn't want to spend billions
on science in order to understand the mysteries of the
universe.
1993 was ultimately the "Year of the Computer." And
the computer word of the year without question was
"Internet," the gigantic, loosely coordinated world-wide
network of personal computers, mainframes and phone lines
that allows millions of people to exchange vital research
and data, to play games when the boss isn't looking, and to
engage in "virtual" relationships, not relationships full of virtue,
but ones which are lifelike but just pretend.
The Internet, heralded by some visionaries as offering
a "paradigm shift" in human consciousness, allows us to
communicate around the globe from the privacy of our home
computer workstations, and in the workplace it promises to
replace telephone tag with email tag. Have your machine
call my machine.
Another computer term which was "way big" in '93 was
"the information superhighway." This phrase, used mostly by
politicians and reporters, refers to the limitless
possibilities that will be on offer when our TVs, computers,
and telephones are intertwined in complex, visionary new
fiber-optic ways that will make the Internet look like old
Route 66. The information superhighway has spawned a vast
array of metaphors, as people imagine on and off ramps,
telecommuting to work, public vs. private transportation,
gas stations and rest stops, highway beautification, and of
course the inevitable potholes, toll plazas, gridlock and
air pollution.
No one on the Internet talks about the information
superhighway. The term is beneath the notice of the true hackers.
So far as I can gather, all the information superhighway means so far
is 500+ cable channels, which means more home shopping, which means more
packages left at your front door by UPS to be rained on or
torn apart by wolves.
I noticed, by the way, while I was channel surfing last
week, that "O'Hara, U.S. Treasury" is back on cable. Like
many Americans, you may have trouble programming a VCR now,
but that's nothing--just you wait till they build that 500
channel information superhighway right through the middle of
your living room. Then you'll really be dysfunctional. But
you will be able to call O'Hara with your remote control,
and if you press "1" on your Touch-Tone phone he will come
over and personally deliver your income tax refund. But
don't press "2," or he'll lob tear gas through your window.
__________
Dennis
--
debaron[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]uiuc.edu (\ 217-333-2392
\'\ fax: 217-333-4321
Dennis Baron \'\ ____________
Department of English / '| ()___________)
University of Illinois \ '/ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
608 South Wright St. \ \ ~~~~~~~~~ \
Urbana, IL 61801 ==). \ __________\
(__) ()___________)